StarMade Taipan

[GaeasSon]

This is partially inspired by Tomino_sama's thread on promoting trade... but it's different enough that I think it wants its own thread.

There was a simple yet addicting game I used to play on my old Apple II: Taipan

StarMade has, or could easily have, pretty much all of the elements that made Taipan awesome. To summarize the game, you are a sea-trader, traveling from port to port and engaging in arbitrage trading. You could start small and bootstrap yourself with a row-boat full of snacks, or you could start with a bigger and more powerful vessel, and a usurious debt owed to the regional banking clan.

How to fuse the games:

• Hold blocks: hold blocks are expensive to buy, but increase the cargo capacity for commodities.
• Commodities: May be useful or useless, consumable or static. In Taipan, they included food, guns, opium, silk, and one or two other things.
• Smarter pirates: The frequency and number of pirates spawning in your sector would be proportional to the value of the trade goods in your hold. The number of pirates would be proportional to the threat-level of your ship their frequency would be inversely proportional to the threat.
• Commodities market news: Exceptionally high or low prices for a trade good could be broadcast via game-chat.
• Trade-Hubs: a small number of trade hubs (much bigger and more rare than the trade stations) where commodities volumes and prices fluctuate more.
• Bank-agents: Like pirates, but ask for your currently due loan payments, and only attack if you don't pay.

Theres a lot more that COULD be done, but that's the essence of it. Thoughts?

Edit: Like hiring an escort! If you have a valuable haul in a lightly defended ship. You know you will make a mint if you can only survive the trade run... What if you could hire x-number of trade federation escorts to fly with you and defend against pirates for the next x minutes? That wasn't in Taipan, but it fits in beautifully.

 

[Eelviny]

Smarter pirates: The frequency and number of pirates spawning in your sector would be proportional to the value of the trade goods in your hold. The number of pirates would be proportional to the threat-level of your ship their frequency would be inversely proportional to the threat.

Amen to that.
I think in general the economy and trading could become a very large and interesting aspect of the game.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

This Taipan seems to be similar to port royale

• Smarter pirates: The frequency and number of pirates spawning in your sector would be proportional to the value of the trade goods in your hold. The number of pirates would be proportional to the threat-level of your ship their frequency would be inversely proportional to the threat.

Frequency and strength of the pirates should be the same for different values of cargo (or slightly higher for the more valuables ones) but fierceness of pirates in chasing/attacking ships should change with the value or size of the players' ships. If i fly big cargo ship i don't want to be certain that i would be attacked, i prefer to live in constant fear
Just my preferable way, but i'd be also happy with Your idea


Hold blocks - just limited storage capacity, based on the mass, value of the block or just the number of them.


For the commodities - consumable ones should affect the population of the NPC stations (if implemented). Selling commodities could earn certain NPC faction likes or faction points.
High populated stations could provide more advanced services like bigger shipyards, more blocks in shops, better trained NPCs, bigger fleet, which could be partially used in faction wars.
This way players could make alliances with NPC factions (and also by doing quests, etc.) and take care of them, because then they would have a stronger ally.


Oh and i think that scanners/radars/tracking stations/etc. are very important in game to be able for players to play as a pirate, or defend against ones. Without them, while flying around in space, players have very little chance to came across anybody, what makes this job very boring.

 

[Doomerzzz]

I really like this idea it gives opportunity to actually play the game properly without having to cheat in materials, start out properly in a small fighter and work you way up through, combat, mining or now trading.. If you've played EVE online it is pretty much what you've described but rather than pirates its usually players that hunt down your cargo ships to intercept the goods your ship is hauling, but pirates would add to the danger of being in the trade.

Being able to expand your cargo capacity would allow you to create a freighter to freight goods between the trade hubs, I suggest also that there being a remote communications device you could use to perhaps detect trade hubs in a near proximity? and from the starting hub it could show the next closest hub to your location, but the main function of the device is to access current stock and pricing so that you'll be able to compare and make a profit without wasting time moving to stations without making any profits..

Also that NPC's can offer quests for trade also to a random trade hub and random goods, which can scale up the difficulty of pirates and rewards corresponding to distance and goods

would actually be an economy :3